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LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 16, 2002

The thorny topic of 'office flowers'

Nowadays the term "OL (office lady)" is seen as semiderogatory (about time, too), and some companies have trashed it completely and started using simply jyosei shain (women employees). This is to differentiate them from sogoshoku (general worker), which is not gender-specific but is used to describe...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 15, 2002

From jobs to robots it's all about chance

It's that time of year again, when hundreds of people can be seen lining up in front of the shopping arcades in Ginza and Shinjuku. No, we're not talking about Christmas. We're talking about the big Yearend Lottery.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 15, 2002

Screen dreams of the good old samura days

With the stock market heading south and the political situation taking an uncanny resemblance to the last sclerotic days of the Soviet Union, no wonder Japanese moviegoers want to be anywhere but here and now. Even so, the number of new and recent Japanese films set in the past is extraordinary, given...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 15, 2002

To eat or not to eat -- here's some advice

One of the big best sellers of the season is "Taberu na, Kiken" (Don't Eat! Danger!), which was first published in October and is now in its third printing. Unlike most books that enjoy such good sales, it isn't getting much attention in the media.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 14, 2002

No surprise tourism suffers

LOS ANGELES -- The government plan to privatize Narita airport in 2004 is welcome news to international travelers who know what good travel service is. The plan, which also includes a halt to building new airports, upgrading existing airports and improving customer service, could go a long way toward...
COMMENTARY
Dec 10, 2002

Political stability decreasing

Nearly 20 months since the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi began, popular support for the Cabinet hovers around 50 to 60 percent, down from the extraordinarily high levels of 70 to 80 percent last year.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 8, 2002

Cashing in far away

Akihisa Fujita has always been a night owl. The 32-year-old former bartender spent much of his 20s serving drinks at high-end establishments in Tokyo's Ginza and Yoyogi-Uehara districts, all the while dreaming of owning his own.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 8, 2002

Capital transports of restricted delight

It's got the party places. It's got the party people. Now if only someone could come up with a way to get the people to the places, Tokyo could truly call itself a 24-hour city.
COMMENTARY
Dec 4, 2002

Japan slams the door on stolen artwork

HONOLULU -- Stolen art is big business. According to Interpol, the traffic in stolen art is worth about $5 billion a year, about as much as the illegal trade in arms and drugs. Accurate estimates of the trade are hard to come by, but this figure is almost certainly low. After all, how does one value...
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Dec 2, 2002

Women's creativity waiting to be tapped

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Several months ago, I mentioned I would be addressing the gender question in a future article. I received several letters urging me to do so. A couple of correspondents, however, argued that the question of women is a purely domestic affair and not relevant to the theme of "Japan...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2002

China has robbed Keio University, Japan's Foreign Ministry of their independence

NEW YORK -- Japan has been in an uproar since five of its citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents more than 20 years ago were allowed to return home Oct. 15. But an even more ominous event for the country, though not prominently reported by the mass media, occurred last month: the "kidnapping"...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 1, 2002

A look at the trials of the uprooted

Though so-called international marriages continue to become more commonplace in Japan, the authorities still treat them as glaring exceptions that call for special treatment. If you're not a Japanese national and you want to make sure you can stay in Japan in the event you divorce your Japanese spouse,...
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2002

Essential dangling modifiers

Yuko, 38, an office worker, has keitai straps appropriate for each season -- furry ones for winter and beaded ones for summer. When the temperature changes, she adds another to her collection.
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2002

West Coast optimists say the sun also rises

LOS ANGELES -- Sometimes the only explanation for it is that there are two Americas. The East Coast America, with its dark cynicism and worldly seen-it-all sangfroid, sees Asia as mostly a problem and a threat. But West Coast America, soaking up its proximity to Asia and reveling in local Asian ethnicities...
BUSINESS
Nov 30, 2002

Ministry to prop up sinking Kansai airport

To save debt-ridden Kansai International Airport Co., the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry has drawn up a bailout plan to provide the semipublic airport operator with about 9 billion yen in subsidies a year and offer government guarantees on short-term bonds to be issued by the company.
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2002

Billions in taxes misused: report

Government organizations and state-funded corporations improperly spent more than 24 billion yen in taxpayer money in fiscal 2001, the Board of Audit said Friday.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / INDUSTRY TRENDS
Nov 29, 2002

Department stores gear up for yearend gift season

Department stores nationwide go into full swing this weekend for the all-important yearend gift-shopping season, hoping to finish on a high note a year marked by battered sales.
JAPAN
Nov 28, 2002

Two arrested in swindle of NTT Communications

Two people, including a former employee of NTT Communications Corp., were arrested Wednesday for allegedly defrauding the firm out of some 200 million yen by padding payments for electronic devices, Tokyo police said.
JAPAN
Nov 28, 2002

Diet enacts law on intellectual property rights

The Diet enacted a basic intellectual property law Wednesday that the government hopes will promote the emergence of eminent scientists like Koichi Tanaka, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
BUSINESS
Nov 28, 2002

Bills for splitting public entities pass

The Diet passed nine bills Wednesday to convert designated special-purpose public corporations, including the National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan, into nine independent administrative entities.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Nov 27, 2002

Game software firms Enix, Square to merge on April 1

Game software makers Enix Corp. and Square Co. said Tuesday they have agreed to merge on April 1 to bolster their earnings base and development capacity.
BUSINESS
Nov 27, 2002

Soy sauce maker sees profit soar

Kikkoman Corp., Japan's largest soy source maker, said Tuesday that its group net profit for the first half of the business year jumped 40.5 percent to 3.62 billion yen from a year earlier, largely thanks to brisk sales in the U.S.
BUSINESS
Nov 27, 2002

Sony to shut down audio operations at Indonesian unit

Sony Corp. said Tuesday it will stop manufacturing audio equipment at its Indonesian subsidiary by next March in line with efforts to restructure its plant operations in Southeast Asia.
Japan Times
JAPAN / THROUGH THE DOOR
Nov 26, 2002

Japan tries to reform refugee system

Japan has often been criticized for closing its doors to asylum seekers. Following the high-profile incident in May at the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, China, in which Japanese officials let Chinese police take a family of North Korean asylum seekers out of the compound, the government has...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Nov 26, 2002

Asia emerging as economic dynamo, WEF says

As Japan remains trapped in its bad-loan mess and Southeast Asia struggles to regain competitiveness after a regionwide financial crisis five years ago, China may appear to be the only bright spot in Asia.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 25, 2002

'Asianization' and 'Wimbledonization' can avert final collapse

An economy is like a balloon. Pump hot air into it and it will soar up into the heavens. If it soars too high for too long, it eventually gets worn or torn, or both, and starts to collapse.
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2002

Bank monitor to be established in campaign to cull bad loans

A new task force to monitor banks' progress in disposing of their sour loans will be set up within the Financial Services Agency by the end of March, it was learned Sunday.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 25, 2002

Gilded Age of excess returns to America

NEW YORK -- During a recent talk in this city on his lifelong subject, the Iwakura Embassy, businessman-scholar Saburo Izumi reminded those gathered that the Japanese group visited the United States during the Gilded Age. This appellation comes, of course, from American writer Mark Twain (and C.D. Warner)...

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan